Unionization is not going to fix the management training problem.
If workers unionize [1], they can force bad management out, or curtail its badness, or in extreme cases - replace management with collective ownership.
[1] - in an independent, non-corrupt union.
Also, I have no idea where you get the idea that unions can somehow force collective ownership. The company belongs to the shareholders, unions don't magically get to take other people's property.
I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
Non-voting shares, yes. Voting shares are usually only given to very senior people, if ever, and not nearly enough to form anything close to a controlling ownership of the company.
> I will say that the horror stories and bad press coming out of the video gaming industry will possibly have a chilling effect for new grads who would otherwise jump straight into it. Eventually management will run out of non-union workers to hire. Or the non-union workers themselves will demand better treatment.
Decades of game development suggests otherwise. Like acting, it's people's dream job. And when the supply of labor exceeds the demand workers do not have leverage.
I think you need to qualify the claim that these experiences are worsening. In fact, from most of the veteran developers I've talked to report the opposite: before the proliferation of the internet crunch time was way more serious since patching was not a viable option. Nowadays it's pretty much the norm that games have significant bugs for the first week or two and still need to mature after release. This creates greater room for error and less pressure to fix every bug before release.
And I agree with manfredo, I started in the industry in 90s, and crunch was already there. If anything, the situation improved in mid 00s, with CA strengthening exempt employees classification and later 00s with ea_spouse lawsuit. E.g. mandatory crunches are gone, it used to be that people were forced to stay late and come in on weekends even if they had nothing to do but good luck pulling this now. Nowadays people mostly crunch either because their bonus comes out of the game's sales (and/or metacritic score, like in EA) or because they are paid OT.
You're talking about the large, collaborationist unions we know in the US - e.g. those in the AFL-CIO - where "the union" is an external entity to "the unionizing workers"; and often with the bureaucratic motivations you describe. I specifically mentioned that's not the kind of unionization I advise.
Also, payment is just one of many issues in a workplace. The basic need for a union is that the company's owners have the mechanisms for thinking, discussing, deciding acting collectively and concertedly, but its employees do not. That's what a union should be.
On that basis, employees may want to tackle issues like:
* Treatment by managers/management * Workplace culture * Physical working conditions * Workforce size vs. "squeezing" of existing employees * Advancement opportunities within the company/organization * Professional standards
and so on.
Finally, remember that a gaming development house has a lot of employees other than developers per se: QA, art, production, administrative etc.
> Nowadays people mostly crunch ... or because they are paid OT.
If people make a good salary, they don't work overtime because they don't need to. There must be some kind of psychological pressure in that direction. Overwork should be avoided.
- who have joint interests and may wish to discuss things, take decisions, and act collect
>If people make a good salary, they don't work overtime because they don't need to.
Sure, they don't need to but, nevertheless, they like their fat bonuses.
Take this story for example. Linkedin lists Glitch's size as 11-50. The highest employee count I've found claims 120. This is small fish in a very large pond. This press release name drops Google, but these companies are three orders of magnitude apart in terms of size.
1. https://craft.co/kickstarter
2. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
And when change occurs, whether a social trend, or new product type, or whatever- the pioneers tend to be smaller examples rather than high-profile, no?
Again, don't conflate discussion and attention with actual change. People who produce the news always have to select their topics, so saying that the news is selectively focusing on something is a tautology. The real question is why people are selecting these topics - and you'd have to direct that question to media producers.
The reality is that approval of unions is not outside of historic trends. The last 10 years has seen a marked increase, but that increase started from historic lows. The current approval rating is not abnormally high [1].
> And when change occurs, whether a social trend, or new product type, or whatever- the pioneers tend to be smaller examples rather than high-profile, no?
In the case of unionization no, not at all. Early unionization efforts were not only industry-wide but society-wide (except for the exclusion of blacks and immigrants). Groups like the Knights of Labor and American Federation of Labor sought to organize all American workers. Big changes in society are usually made by big groups. The reality is that the fact that 350 workers unionizing in a field of millions has near zero effect.
1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/241679/labor-union-approval-ste...
Finally, I never said "high-profile" had to mean FAANG. These two are high-profile cases that gets public attention- not necessarily because the media is manufacturing a narrative, but because Kickstarter, for its small size, is a household name. And Glitch is the successor of Fog Creek Software- this company, as well as Anil Dash and Joel Spolsky, are certainly high-profile names in the tech startup scene. We're not discussing some unknown boutique consultancy.
Very rarely do employees receive equity as compensation.
And then immediately be sued by the union & former employees for retaliation under the labor acts. Businesses already tried that sort of shenanigans
Management is under no obligation to accept union terms, and is free to hire non-union work if the union terms are not competitive.
This does not sound right - this effectively gives unions the ability to extort companies with impunity. I'll believe this claim that companies are prohibited by law from hiring a non-union workforce if you back it up with a source.
(If you literally only have 2 employees, the employer might not meet the threshold to be covered under the NLRB.)
cite: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/whats-law/employers/b...
Right, it's illegal for a company to say "we're not going to bargain with you collectively, at all" but it's not illegal to decline the bargain that employees offer. The company at least has to sit at the table and consider their option - it does not prohibit companies from listening to the collective bargain and declining to accept it.
In an industry known for abusing its employees (which, BTW, does not extend to software engineering in general, in my opinion - software engineers are treated well almost everywhere else), you _need_ pushback to end abuse. It's as simple as that. Even if unionizations fail, they still serve as a signaling mechanism - if things get bad enough, they'll start succeeding, and that's the outcome employers would like to avoid. The solution is simple: they should pull their heads out of their collective asses and start treating employee abuse as a real problem. If there's no downside for them to not doing this, they won't do it. It's as simple as that.